Holocaust Punchcards

American in the 1930s
a perverse empire
the dream of individualism
and capitalism collapsed,
but the nasty secret
intact

Europe, stagnant void
at the center
metastasizing Nazis
world-domineering
world-war brewing

To the east, Russia
the vast frontier of the Bolsheviks
untouched by the Depression -
Stalin and
Ford together.

I can picture those men meeting
in 1929, to agree the world's
largest industrial plant,
then or since -
cars, hundreds of thousands
of them, produced every year
under Stalin's portrait.

And then there's IBM, covertly
making punchcards
and computers
for the Nazis'
gas-chambers.

World in the 1930s -
a flushing toilet.

Summing It Up

Geithner's Big New Plan is to lever up to $1 trillion and use the leverage to buy the private sector's leverage.

What is levering up? Oh that's right. It's borrowing money, using other borrowed money as collateral - a process that flourishes uncontrollably in unregulated markets on the brink of catastrophe.

He Uses That Silver Toupee As His Cum Rag

Chris Dodd inserts a loophole
for AIG
executives get bonus billions
while Americans one by one
drown in the debt sea.
Dodd of Connecticut,
- chairman
of the banking committee -
admitted he got a special mortgage
from Countrywide
because he was a VIP.

Just Sayin'

"American consumers are hunkered down, bracing for a depression," said Britt Beemer, chief executive of America's Research Group. "The dramatic drops in shopping levels have no match in our database in the last 30 years."

Grim

It was falsely believed
that money only had worth if it
circulated,
so the savings were effaced,
the credit ran in a mighty river,
now the liquidity is running dry,
and so are the California valleys,
with that goes our food supply.

The Objective Apocalypse

The meaning of the Objective Apocalypse is that humanity is doomed - most of all because of its reaping of finite natural resources, especially the remains of dead dinosaurs.

Play Money

"Quantitative easing is often described as 'printing money' -- although no new notes and coins are actually created.

Instead the Bank of England will 'create' more money on its balance sheet, then use this to buy banks' assets such as home loans and government bonds, thereby pumping extra cash into the system."

The Times

Pandit and Lewis lie,
the stock markets climb,
Satan laughs,
the moon careens off course,
the produce dies,
the Depression approaches
like a shroud of locusts, bats,
dust, shrapnel, gnats, flies.

Hopeless

History's dams threaten to break open,
and my life stands on a little whim, a little hope.

So It's Gone

"We don’t know whether to cut any contracts in roubles or dollars, or something else. We don’t know what prices for anything will be, what demand will be, what our market will look like."

That's a banker talking about the situation in Russia. If you don't have answers to those questions, you don't have a functioning economy. So Russia is into a complete collapse, the consequences of which are fairly unthinkable.

Fah

There are too many embarrassments
and faults to account for
so adopt the countenance of a flower
and forget.


All the old supply lines,
the industrial zones,
the granite department stores,
the thunder of factories:
modernity has retreated into pure transparency.

How the Times Change

It's funny for Gordon Brown to state in his sycophantic speech before a joint session of Congress, "American bonds are unbreakable," when during the early 1800s America could barely sell its bonds to the British. London was the center of world finance at that time. Quoting the "House of Morgan":

"British bankers cursed America as a land of cheats, rascals and ingrates. State defaults also tainted federal credit, and when Washington sent Treasury agents to Europe in 1842, James de Rothschild thundered, 'Tell them you have seen the man at the head of the finances of Europe, and that he has told you they cannot borrow a dollar. Not a dollar.'"

America had rebelled against Britain's taxes and economic tyranny, but long after independence it depended on Britain for loans. British banks funded the construction of early infrastructure and even loaned America money for the Louisiana Purchase.

Back then America was the equivalent of a third-world debtor nation. Now American bonds (T-bills) are probably the most sought-after asset in the world. It can't sell enough. The country can thank J.P. Morgan for that. His family set up shop in London and wooed the British bankers. By 1900, America had seized the reigns of world finance, with J.P. Morgan in the saddle.

It's an overarching story of the 18th and 19th century: power evacuating the United Kingdom and gravitating around the United States. The story came full circle today when Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown brown-nosed the American Congress like a middle-manager blubbering fulsomely for a promotion.

Ta-Ta, Hank Paulson

Hank Paulson has disappeared, hopefully forever, from the global scene. The high school football star rose to the top of the Treasury and Goldman Sachs, stopping along the way in the Nixon Administration.

Oh, you don't remember? Paulson was the chief aid to Ehrlichman, the man imprisoned for planning and executing Watergate. Later, Paulson fell in with the Chinese, like many Nixonians, and even convinced them, in a feat worthy of Theodore Roosevelt, to make the Yunan Valley a protected reserve. When he was chairman of Goldman Sachs in the mid-zeros, the Bush Administration hired him to become the Secretary of the Treasury. A handsome job. As per the ethics requirement, Paulson sold his Goldman stake and made $200,000,000. Cha-ching.

After the financial crisis struck, he presented a three-page plan to Congress for 700 billion dollars. The bill gave him immunity from prosecution and said his decisions on how to spend the money could not 'be reviewed by any court of law.' When Congressmen, particularly Republicans, revolted, he told them that in the absence of the money there would be martial law. Congress agreed to the bill after it was stuffed with over $100 billion dollars of pork-barrel spending.

Paulson ultimately dispensed with half of the $700 billion incomprehensibly. Banks and investors pocketed the money, or Paulson just wiped his ass with it. He called this the TARP. The original purpose was to buy up bad assets at banks, but Paulson changed his mind about that - probably after he realized that there are about a quadrillion bad assets on the computer networks.

Hank Paulson bested J.P Morgan.

Do You Smell the Sewers Under the Roads?

"His selection was praised by some who noted his articulateness and experience as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and a senior envoy to China and other nations."

That's probably all you need to know about Obama's pick to handle major classified reports for the U.S. government. Mr. Freeman for inspector general. He's being 'probed' for possible compromising links to foreign powers. Specifically, Freeman is on the 'advisory board' of a Chinese oil-drilling company. A Saudi prince was kind enough to give him a million dollars. (Saudi princes are wonderful benefactors, as Al-Qaeda will testify.)

The Saudis and the Chinese hold the cards now. Sometimes history just works out that way.